birthday twins!!

mom and i have almost the same birthday.  for her bday, i wanted to test out the pattern that i used for the burgundy kenya top, but with a full back instead.  obviously, mom is more modest than my teenager students.  i used this ghanian cotton gauze that one of my senior students from this year gave me, along with my beloved silk-cotton blend bedsheet as the lining.

the cotton gauze was very thin, thus making this combo an ideal concoction for summer-wear.  the front had a peter pan collar like the burgundy top.  check out the symmetry of the 2 sides!

on the back, even though there was a seam straight up the middle in the back, i cut the left and right halves so that the pattern continued!  **pats myself on the back for the even sewing**

oh wait, what's that?  i made myself one too??

mom's was so cute and i was able to squeeze out one for myself too from the leftover fabric.  i wore mine on my trip to sorrento and capri with shirley for my bday!  (i'll post pics of my italian debut of the top once shirley gets a chance to upload them.)  i might have worn the top out to the bars with friends on my actual bday as well, hehe.  aren't mom and i adorable??  bday twinsies!

in other news, the bunks has moved into my new apartment!  reunited!!  i've spent the entire summer separated from him.  thanks to mom and dad for taking good care of the bunny.  happy bday to mom and me!!!

now you see it...

(how embarassing!)

and now you don't!

once i get my white bedspread back from ct, the green will look sharper with the white.  i also built a table and chair set this weekend:

no more eating while sitting on the floor!  i also made mom's bday present... early!  how do you like that?  however, no pics until she opens it!

indian kenya top?

so, i'm a sucker.  georgia, one of my students who went to kenya with me, had a birthday while there.  she asked, i.e. BEGGED, me to make her a garment for her bday.  sweet kid, built similarly to me but much taller, hmmm, she could be a guinea pig for a tops pattern for me!  so, i made simplicity 1614 "view b", a tank top with a top yoke and a cross strap in the back.  i was intrigued by the cross strap, and knowing that mom would never wear something with that cross strap, this was the perfect pattern to test out on georgia.

i used the rest of the burgundy cotton gauze from the pair of kenya pants.  georgia chose it because she loved my kenya pants and i had JUST enough.  she really liked the navy sleeveless parent-teacher conference dress i made earlier this year, particularly the collar, and asked that i include a collar on whatever i ended up making her.  so, i drafted my own pattern for a peter pan collar, since the pattern didn't have one.  here's the top, bare, without any decoration yet.  unfortunately, i didn't account for seam allowances on the collars' edges, and thus the tips are a bit far apart... oops.

the color is duller than reality because of the camera flash.  the remaining pictures more accurately depict the burgundy.  here's the back:

to be honest, i'm not a fan of the back at all.  also, my shoulders are so narrow that the cross-strap didn't lay flat.  ugh.  not for me.  glad i made a guinea pig version of this pattern so that i didn't waste any fabric on a version for myself!  because the cotton gauze was so plain, i decided to trim the collar and the cross-strap.  this vintage gold indian trim (gifted from a former student many years ago) was perfect.

guess what i used to use it for... as a tie to hold open the shutters that close off my bedroom from my living room in my current apartment.  hahahahhahahah!!!  i'm so innovative, i know!

i was able to hand stitch it on so easily!  i'm surprised by how much i love the look!  when i first got the trim, i was certain i'd never use it on a garment.  ha!

cute, right?  here's the top, done!

and around back:

i'm going to mail it to her, as the kid is traipsing thailand and cambodia right now (oh, to be a kid again!!), and i don't want it to get lost in all my boxes as i have to pack up my apartment.  that's right, i'm moving!  ugh.  not thrilled, yet, slightly excited at the same time.  landlord is forcing everyone out of the building, so here's my chance to move somewhere quieter, but in the same neighborhood!

this was my attempt at packing this weekend, while working on a final project for my doctoral class.  that's right, i packed and sewed instead of working on the project... tsk tsk tsk.  when i came here, i packed my life into 41 boxes.  here are 7 so far.  the new apartment has space for a dining table!  hurray!  no more eating on the ground!  now i get to have a table for cutting fabric, i mean eating, again!

kenya pants!!

worried that i didn't make it back from kenya?  fear not!  i returned safely!  currently drowning in doctoral work.  class started 3 days after i returned from kenya!  (ask me how i was the only one who showed to class that monday...)  i had a presentation yesterday (meh) and i have a paper due tuesday.  what better time than to update the blog?

i thought of giving away the 3 pairs of pants that i made to the dear masai girlies who attended the school where we built the library foundation.  how cool would it be to go back to the village, say even in a couple years, and see people donning my handmade clothing??  however, then i got practical and realized i actually lack lounge pants in ny, seeing as i took apart my favorite pair of pj pants to serve as a pattern for these pants, so selfish me, i kept all 3.  this red pair became my primary pair of work pants at the site.  cotton gauze is amazing in scorching hot kenyan weather!  here i am, using a pickax to break up rocks that were impeding our laying down of the library walls.  pickaxes are heavy!

i made 2 pairs of grey-green pants as well.  here was the first pair, also filthy from much manual labor.  i'm wearing mom's floppy orange beach hat that i bought her in honolulu to protect me from the sun.  the kids all wore safari hats.  i, of course, had to be unique (and goofier-looking!).  hahhahahaha

there are the library walls and foundation.  those rocks that form the wall were HEAVY!  think 50 pounds or more!  that's half my weight!  the experience was amazing though.  i loved working with the masai kids on their math and playing soccer with our boys and their boys after construction every day.  this last picture is from our safari drive.  it's part of a group picture, so i cut everyone else out (hehe, gotta maintain the spotlight, yo!).  conveniently, i'm in the front (i mean, where else would i be? the back?), so you have a good shot of my pants.  all 3 pairs actually have functioning drawstrings (look carefully below), which as you may know, are not often features of my handmade pj pants!

that's right, i traipsed through nairobi and the masai mara in glorified pj pants!  holla!

week of 2 tiered cakes!

on my 30 before 30 list, i had "make a proper 2 tiered cake" as one of my bucket list items to accomplish before my 30th bday.  i did make a 2 layer cake when my friends sonija and bernardo visited me in philly, however the presentation was really lacking.  for last thursday's math and science teacher social at my school, i made a 2 tier banana cake with a layer of bananas in between each tier and topped with cream cheese frosting and strawberries.  it was delicious and a beauty.  i wish i had snapped a picture of it after it was cut so you could see the inside.

then this saturday i went to a wine tasting event at my friend's apt and caught this fantastic view of manhattan from the subway station:

sunday, my football team had a reunion bbq and i baked a purple velvet cake with strawberries and cream cheese frosting in between each layer and on top as well.  think red velvet, but with a little blue food coloring!  my football team donned purple uniforms.

this cake was delicious, although i had a really hard time making the frosting stick to the cake because the cake was baked on the same day that i put on the frosting and thus it was a little too warm.  there were little purple cake bits all over the frosting.  to mask this, i sprinkled coconut flakes on top.  with the banana cake, i had baked the cake the day before and refrigerated it so that it was not as soft and crumbly.  oh well!  lessons for next time!

uygur top!!

a sweet student of mine from my 2 year stint in philly (lucky girl was stuck with me for 2 years in a row!) brought me back this beautiful print from xinjiang province in western china, land of the uygur people.  i'd love to go there one day.  anyhoo, determined to tweak butterick 5608 (view c) from mom's mother's day top to my size, i set off with a hell of a lot of pins and tape and revamped the pattern to fit my goofily proportioned build!

it took a while, but i did it.  it finally fits!  the print is bold... very bold.  i wish i had centered the inner facing of the back so that when it hangs on a hanger, the inside looks neat and symmetric.  oh well, it's just the inside...

on the side, i created a button and loop closure like i did on mom's.  the buttons are vintage, from carin, my coworker!  i swear i will have enough vintage buttons to last my lifetime!

around back:

i wanted to get someone to snap a pic of me in the top today while at work, but alas, the day was hectic and i forgot.  here's my best attempt at a self-pic.  a little sketchy, i know.

pretty cute, right?  

off to sew some pants for chaperoning a field trip to kenya.  i leave june 22!  ahh!!!  we're going to be doing lots of manual labor...  in equatorial heat...  yet we were told to wear long pants (cargo-pocket work slacks in particular, but come on, slacks in EQUATORIAL HEAT?)...  i'm going to make myself a couple pairs of thin cotton gauze beachy lounge pants!!!

memorial day 2013

gotta love long weekends.  i kicked mine off right by 1st hanging with shirley on saturday, who was in town for the weekend!!!  yippee!!!  she was so sweet and got me some chevron-like fabric while she was in seattle for a wedding!  i love it!  it will be used to make a summer dress for our visit to capri this summer!  whee!! 

of course, i had to finish a garment in time for my reunion with shirley, hehe.  i used the rest of that lotus leaf fabric from mom's mother's day top to make myself a peplum top!  the lining was my beloved silk and egyptian cotton bedsheet.  

i used the pattern from my oregon beach dress to make the bodice.  for the peplum skirt, i had hoped to make a cute short half-circle skirt.  however, i had very little fabric left after making the bodice, and thus i cut out 2 long rectangles, stitched them together lengthwise, and made a gathered peplum skirt.  i'm actually happy i went this route because now the top looks quite different from my oregon beach dress!

around back, i had an invisible zipper (this one being my 3rd attempt because the 1st 2 were each too short and thus i could not fit my shoulders past the tiny waist part of the top!!), along with 3 button and loop closures above the zipper.  they were leftover from mom's top, and it would have been a shame to not use such perfectly matching buttons on this garment!

on sunday, alex, an old friend from grade school, threw a barbecue in prospect park.  the day was beautiful.  i let him pick what i should bake for the event, and he chose strawberry rhubarb pie, of course... rhubarb is not always easy to find.  i successfully hunted down 3 stalks!  here are the strawberry and rhubarb before sugar and other sweet wonderfulness was added.  the color was so vibrant:

i squeaked out 2 small pies... on which i cut out pi symbols as vents, of course!  once a math teacher, always a math teacher!  

transporting the pies was no small feat.  i went to the small grocery store next to my apartment and asked for a box big enough to carry 2 pies.  they gave me a small box in which i could only stack the pies, so i asked them for the lid of another box so that i could create a divider.  genius, no??  the pies were still hot, so it was imperative that they sat on flat surfaces so that they would not fold and drip everywhere.  this looks like a mini-oven!

here's me in the lotus top again (you know i'm going to wear it to school this week too... just you wait!), on alex's friend's rooftop as we were waiting to catch views of the sunset. my friend ryan took the pic... as i was yelling at him to hurry up because he was so slowwwwww.

bunks was up to no good all weekend, making messes on my new west elm couch!!!  what nerve!  his entry has been banned onto the couch unless i am home to monitor him... so i lined the edge of the couch with tins of sewing thread.  i'm such an innovative thinker, i know.

happy long weekend to all and to all a goodnight!

why have i never thought of this before???

hehe!  bunny brownies!

mom's mother's day top

for mother's day, i made mom a top using butterick 5608, view c, and this green and gold lotus leaves cotton that i bought online years ago from this online fabric store's closing sale.  i only had 1.5 yards of it, so i had always saved the fabric until i knew exactly for which project to use it.  

it's funny how something that can look so ridiculous on one person can be so stunning on another.  on me, the shirt looked like a sack.  thus, my mannequin will provide the model shots...  here's the front:

and the back.  next time, i'm going to make the part between the 2 shoulders narrower.  neither mom nor i have that wide of a back.

i'm sure you all guessed that i had to add my own design element to make the project more of a challenge!  how about a line of button and loop closures on the left side of the shirt?  not bad right?  the pattern doesn't call for anything on the sides, not even a zipper!  you can hardly see the buttons because they were a perfect match!!!  i found them in the numerous boxes of vintage buttons that carin gifted me.

a zoomed-in view.  i added a modesty panel in the back so that in case the buttons were loose or unbuttoned, mom would not be showing that much skin.  hehe.

here it is on her!  cute isn't it?!?!?  i want to make myself a version, once i finish tweaking the pattern to my measurements and once my seniors finish their calc finals at the end of this week!  ahh!!!  i'm drowning!!!!!

happy mother's day!

bake sale beasts

i baked 2 batches of fudgy brownies last week.  for 2 student council bake sales.

look how teeny these chocolate chips are!  my brownies have a very chocolatey inside.

we were bake sale beasts.  $330 in 1.5 hrs total!

lace top + earth day!

i finished the lace top just in time for earth day!  very appropriate, if you ask me, seeing as the lace is from a thrift store!  for the back, i used one of carin's vintage acrylic buttons.  after some polishing, the button became quite shiny!  the left one is an unpolished one, and the right is polished:

here it is, installed just above the zipper.  i like that it's clear and doesn't detract from the busy lace, yet is pretty!

here's the back, zoomed out:

and the front, on my mannequin:

and here i am, wearing my new shirt at school!  this is my 1st garment that is this loose.  i'm so used to my clothes being much more fitted that i stupidly thought this top would require a zipper.  NOPE!  so glad i realized this AFTER i installed one, TWICE, because i'm the idiot who doesn't line up zippers before attaching them.

not gonna lie, i'm a huge fan of this top.  although, not sure what's going on with all those wonky folds in this pic.

in honor of earth day, i baked some leaf and shamrock sugar cookies.  i would have made bunnies, but i figured everyone is tired of seeing my adorbs bunny cookies.

speaking of bunnies, guess who got cute bunny studs this weekend!!!

BUNKS!  jk hahahha!  he's using my lap as a stepladder to get onto the coffeetable.  apparently he reallllly wanted to read my final papers from college.  

happy earth day!  give all your little bunnies a hug and a kiss hehe